Witchcraft Goes Mainstream: Uncovering Its Alarming Impact on You and Your Family

This book is the best conservative Christian assessment of modern witchcraft on the market to date. It easily replaces, as a general assessment, Craig Hawkins's earlier book "Witchcraft - Exploring the World of Wicca" (1996) which, despite its flaws, does discuss areas not focused on by Alexander and is better than some of the newer books on the topic such as Tim Baker's shallow and unscholarly "Dewitched". Unlike Hawkins who tried to tie the biblical condemnation of "witchcraft" to all modern "witchcraft" practices today and blurred the distinction between witchcraft in general and Wicca in particular and sometimes confused them with Neo-Paganism in general, Alexander is more cautious and balanced. He shows that there are four main categories of witchcraft that must be distinguished: biblical, anthropological, historical, and modern religious. Regarding biblical witchcraft, he admits that, in some cases, the Hebrew and Greek terms usually translated as "witch/witchcraft" and/or "sorcerer/sorcery" don't tell us what specific occult practice is identified so it is difficult to give a single, specific meaning to the term "witchcraft" as it is used in Scripture. He says there are eight references to witchcraft in the Bible, seven of which are in the Old Testament. The exact root of the Hebrew word mekashef is uncertain but is believed to come from a word meaning to cut or cut up, possibly referring to drugs or plants as sliced and shredded for a "magical brew". He notes that the "witch of Endor" (1 Samuel 28:3-19) was probably a necromancer or spirit medium, and the statement from 1 Samuel, "rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft" (15:23, KJV), involves the word qesem which, he says, "refers to some (unknown) form of divination." In the New Testament, the Greek word pharmakeia is translated once (in Galatians 5:20) as "witchcraft" and four times (in the Book of Revelation) as "sorcery, sorceries or sorcerers". This word is at the root of the English word "pharmacy" which, again, seems to involve drugs, potions or poisons. For Alexander, the biblical bottom line is that the references are "hard to apply with precision today because the biblical translators were naming ancient occult practices with terms taken from the theological controversies of their own day - and they weren't always consistent in the way they did it." That kind of admission from a conservative Christian who is writing about witchcraft is uncommon! Although Alexander discusses anthropological and historical witchcraft, referring to scholars like Jeffrey Burton Russell, his focus is on the two "cultures" of modern witchcraft: traditional witchcraft as derived from Gerald Gardner's influence and authors such as Michelet, Leland, Murray, and Graves who contributed to what he calls the contra-Christian and pseudo-historic "Charter Myth" of an ancient, enduring Pagan tradition (which modern scholarship has debunked and some witches acknowledge) and the pop-culture witchcra

This is the definitive work on the market concerning this topic. Brooks handles the subject of witchcraft in a responsible straightforward and well researched manner. He deals with witchcraft in a historical setting as well as clearly defines and educates his readers on the subject. If you are going to purchase any book on witchcraft to gain an understanding on witchcraft, this is the book to have sitting on your bookshelf! Jeff Harshbarger Ex Occultist